Google finally takes action to remove Holocaust denial sites from top search results

Google
Google has tweaked its search algorithm, after it was widely reported that the first result for "Did the Holocaust happen?" was from Stormfront, a white supremacist website.
When the news broke earlier this month, Google said it would not remove the article - entitled "Top 10 reasons why the holocaust didn't happen" - from its search results, for fear that it would be accused of censorship.
"The fact that hate sites appear in Search results does not mean that Google endorses these views," said a spokesperson at the time.
"Search is a reflection of the content and information that is available on the internet. A site's ranking in search results is determined by computer algorithms using hundreds of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query.
"We do not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content, malware and violations of our webmaster guidelines."
However, the company has since had a change of heart, and has adjusted its algorithm to remove "non-authoritative information" and "help surface more high quality, credible content on the web".
Following the change, the Stormfront article has moved down a few spots in search rankings, but still appears in the top 10 results. However, a handful of other Holocaust denial sites have been pushed out.
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“We strive to give users a breadth of diverse content from variety of sources and we're committed to the principle of a free and open web," a spokesperson told Digital Trends.
"Judging which pages on the web best answer a query is a challenging problem and we don't always get it right. We'll continue to change our algorithms over time in order to tackle these challenges."
This isn't the first time Google has been in hot water for throwing up antisemitic search results.
An earlier report by The Guardian found that typing "Are jews" into Google's search engine returned an auto-complete suggestion of "Are jews evil?" - and nine out of the top 10 results answered the question in the affirmative.
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